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Friday, February 12, 2010

I feel like it's pretty handy that, if you happen to find Valentine's Day to be a generally useless and pedantic holiday, you can instead focus on the three day weekend afforded to some by President's Day and then there's always the Winter Olympics starting tonight that I've heard some people calling the "lame" Olympics and to that I say, No.

Which, when I think about it, is sort of a contrary opinion for me - being that I prefer summer over winter, generally speaking - except that I find winter sports a lot more entertaining to watch than summer ones.

Except for diving.

For some reason I can't get enough of people diving into swimming pools. It must be the cringe factor embedded in my brain from the whole Greg Louganis thing back in the 80s (was that the 80s? I can't remember.) that makes me want to tempt fate by watching these dudes in dick slings go flipping off a high dive with their head two inches from the board so that I can watch in amazement as they, not only don't crack their skulls, but instead manage to enter the water without as much splash as a turd hitting the bowl.

Incredible, that diving.

Beyond that though, I have no use for the Summer Olympics. To me, they're the lame ones. I don't care about gymnastics in any form, everyone doing the outside events looking all sweaty and stinky and watching people go back and forth in a pool all the live long day makes me nod off.

I used to swim competitively when I was a kid and, I'll tell you, the only way I'm summoning the interest for a 1500M freestyle event is if I, myself, am getting a ribbon at the end. Which I don't think you get if you watch it at home while eating popcorn in your jammies. Especially if you haven't been swimming competitively for, oh, 24 years.

No, I'd rather watch some Austrian psychopath go rocketing off a ski jump without regard for his own well-being.

Or a Skeleton athlete (are they Skeletoners? Skeletors? I don't know.) throwing their barely clothed body FACE FIRST down an iced-over water park slide on a sled built for one.

They don't even have a teammate to blame it on if everything goes horribly awry, as it's apt to do, and they, say, get their face ripped off. That is crazy bullshit, right there. You don't get that with synchronized swimming. Or badminton. Or table tennis.

Perhaps it's the death-defying nature or general wrongness of the events in the Winter Olympics that make it more appealing to me, being the apparent sado that I am.

I mean, I know what it looks like for people to run fast. Not that I, myself, can run fast, but I *get* how it happens.

What I don't *get*, however, is the luge. Or bobsledding. Or that crazy downhill skiing where they go around slapping gates down under their armpits as they're sucked to the base of the mountain by the aggressive evils of gravity.

Having been on skis for one horrifying day of my life, I can say that this looks nothing short of impossible and, frankly, like these guys are superheroes. It is hard for me to *get* how they do it and yet, there they are, sliding down the hill so fast that they're nothing but a spandexy blur.

And while I'd like to say that I *get* snowboarding, since I've been riding for well over a decade now, I will never *get* how people manage to live through the half pipe events because it looks like they're all, each and every one of them, going to fly out of that thing and go crashing to earth in an unfortunate but stylish if-not-for-the-visible-pantylines heap somewhere in the stands of onlookers.

Like loose cannons, these snowboarders. They're incredible. They could die doing that thing with the halfpipe, yet there they are, all with their undies showing and spiked belts and what not, ready to fling themselves up and out of that thing as though scraping their face against the blue snow is no worry to them whatsoever.

And did I mention the biathlon? My most favorite Winter Olympic event because of its obvious absurdity? They have guns, friends.

GUNS.

That is rad.

And they have to somehow skiskiski super fast and accurately and then, with their hearts racing from all that pesky skiing, drop down to the ground and hit a target 50 meters off.

Unbelievable. Impossible. Someone give these loons a medal!

Oh wait...

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is that the sports in the Winter Olympics are way more incredible to me than the summer ones, probably because of the fantastically absurd nature of most of the events (minus the useless curling, figure skating and hockey) and so I like them better.They're also held in snowy far-off places that hold boundless mystique for my bland little mind and I find these places more compelling than, say, Atlanta, Georgia.

So, I don't really know what got me all hopped up about the Olympics starting except that it seemed like a nice alternative to the predictable bitching about Valentine's Day which people don't seem to take seriously from me since I'm, right now, sitting here with a bouquet of orange roses and fantastically ironic card from Bubba.

Hey, flowers for a fake holiday are still flowers, people. As long as I'm not getting flowers as an apology for running off with a stripper, I'm OK to receive them for just any old reason. And, hey, maybe he sent them to celebrate the Winter Olympics' opening ceremonies?

The card does only say, "Happy made-up holiday..." after all, so that could apply either way.

Though I completely agree with your thorough assessment of the Olympics, I'd like to point out one very redeeming quality of Valentines Day. Chocolate! Need I say more? Not only are you given free rein to shove as much chocolate down your throat as is physically possible (and with NO judgement), you're given flowers too! I'm just sayin', V-Day, not all bad......

I love the Olympics, either season. This year I'm hoping to watch the skating pairs and MAYBE somebody will fall on their face. I'm hoping for it to either be the Russians or Chinese because you know their coaches will lose their shit and start screaming at the girl with a bloody face for being a fuck up.

Anyways.

I always think Valentines Day is rivals News Years Eve in the day most people contract STD's. Surely their is a study on that.

Love the Olympics, both winter and summer. And totally agree with you about biathlon. I love it. I especially love how the lead can change in about 5 seconds when some poor Swedish guy misses a shot and drops back 15 places. Husband and I will be glued to the TV for the next two weeks.

After watching the Olympics for the last week or so, I have to concur. How the hell do these people live through their events?! Sheesh, just the litany of surgeries some of these athletes have had is mind-numbing.

Unlike you, though, I do like the figure skating. I keeping thinking that one of these days, one of those pretty girls (or boys) is gonna fall on her (or his) ass and just sit there. That's what I would do. Then I'd slink off the ice, never to return. But, no, they bounce back up and keep going, trying to keep a brave smile on their faces.

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.